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What's going on, Pursuers?

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Welcome to this episode of the Proceed of Calling podcast.

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I'm your host, Thomas Carney.

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And in this episode, I talked about the time I almost lost $4,000 and the lessons I learned

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from that.

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So let's dive in.

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How's it going, guys?

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Let's dive right in to this kind of embarrassing story.

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So it's important, though.

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It was scary for me because this was the second most amount of money that I almost lost to

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something like this, which you might be like, Thomas, what the heck?

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Why are you almost losing thousands of dollars?

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And I think it's because I have ambition, but it's also because I make dumb decisions.

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So a little bit of backstory about this time.

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So I thought it was time to hire a coach again.

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I was perusing through Instagram, as one does, and saw an ad that was for Christian coaches,

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coaches who are Christians who wanted to learn more about how to be a coach, essentially.

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And so this was Christian coaches coaching Christian coaches, essentially.

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That was how this was portrayed.

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And so I signed up for the form, sign up for the call.

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I thought it was going to be a free call where I got a little bit of value, but that's not

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really what happened.

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It ended up being a sales call where some, a little bit what I would call sleazy sales

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tactics, sleazy sales tactics were used.

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And I ended up saying yes to the call.

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I saying yes to that call to or say I went on the call.

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I ended up saying yes and spent $4,000.

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I gave them my credit card information.

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What saved me in the end, I'll be honest with you, what saved me from actually losing $4,000

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is probably that they didn't have me signed anything.

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So that was on them.

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But in the long run, what ended up happening is I did not lose $4,000 because I learned

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the power of saying no.

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So we're going to jump right into that.

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So what does it mean?

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Before we talk about saying no, we're going to talk about what it means to say yes to

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the wrong thing.

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Because that's what happened in my case.

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So saying yes to the, the wrong thing, it causes you to steer straight away from your

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calling.

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In this instance, for me, where I wanted to go into this coaching program, but then I

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realized pretty quickly, like literally, literally, like right after the call was done, I realized

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that it's not what I wanted to do.

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I talked with Sean, who used to be the co-host of the Tech with Key Short podcast.

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We talked and he was like, yeah, man, you should get your money back because you clearly

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don't want to do this.

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And so that, you know, set off the whole thing of me talking with them, then getting my money

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back.

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And now they didn't want to give me my money back.

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So I had to dispute it.

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That's a whole other thing.

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But the, but saying yes to the wrong thing, like I said, cause you to stray away from

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your calling.

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And that could be maybe it can even just cause you to stray away from, you know, the great

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things in life.

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Right?

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Like you could say, let's put it in the context of eating habits.

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You can say yes to that next donut or you can say no and put it down and say, I'm going

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to be healthier.

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I'm actually on a diet.

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I'm on a diet so I can lose weight.

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I am actually, or I'm actually not going to eat that donut because I need to leave room

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for the food, the great food.

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I'm going to eat later.

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Cause I only, you only got so much room in your stomach.

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Right?

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You can't, like we're going to get into this more.

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I'm trying to jumping ahead of myself, but your, you only got so much room in your stomach.

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You can't fill it up with all these good things, all these sweet, delicious things.

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Cause I love dessert.

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Don't get me wrong.

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But you can't fill your stomach up on dessert and then expect to, to build muscle and expect

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to have all this great energy.

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If you didn't leave room for the great, for the great things, the food that are going

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to, for the things that are going to fuel you, the food that's going to fuel you for

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your future, the things that you're actually working towards.

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Whew.

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That's good.

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I don't like pat myself with, I don't, you don't always want to pat yourself from the

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back, but I'm pretty happy about that one.

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So for me, when I, when I went and said yes to this coaching program, you know, I had

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said yes to the wrong thing and I almost realized it too late.

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However, this experience gave me the wisdom to more easily say no to that the next time.

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Kind of like how endurance works.

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It's all about learning, right?

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Learning no for me, learn going through this experience taught me to say no to the, to

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these wrong things.

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Just like whenever you're enduring something hard, it teaches you to endure better the

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next time.

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Like this is all about personal growth and development and learning and learning how

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to do these great learning, how to do great things for yourself and for those around you.

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So why is it important?

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Why is this important for you?

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Why do you have to say, why do you have to know how to say no to the no to the wrong

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things and yes to the right things?

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Like, why does that matter?

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Well, if you're pursuing your calling, if this, if you're here and you're a pursuer,

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like then I believe this is something that you, a skill that you want to perfect.

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Not, well, you want to be excellent at.

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Excellence does not mean perfection.

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We're going to strike that away right now.

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The saying no to the wrong things, you know, it will help you stay on your path of pursuing

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your calling and away from the path that only takes you away from it.

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This might seem a little vague, so let me try to put it into a little bit more context.

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Saying no to something doesn't necessarily mean that that thing is bad.

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Like we already talked about, about with the donut.

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Donuts aren't bad.

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They're bad for you, but they taste good.

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Eating one donut isn't going to kill you, right?

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It's not a bad thing to eat.

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I don't think it's even a bad thing to eat one donut, right?

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It's not healthy for you, but it tastes really good and it gives you a little bit of satisfaction.

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It makes your like, I love sugar.

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Can you, I kind of want to get dessert now.

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I want a donut.

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Go to Oakmont Bakery.

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But the, does that make any sense?

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I kind of, I actually really rushed through that, that lesson, but why is it important

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for you?

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Think about your, think about your calling.

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Think about the things that you could be doing better.

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Think about the things.

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I want you to actually comment below.

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Comment the things that you either given up in the past in the, for the sake of great

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things or if you can't think of something, comment below the things that you can give

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up in order to make room for the great.

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Comment what you're going to give up and the great thing that you're going to replace

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with it.

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There are so many great things out there, but there are way more good things, right?

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There's so many good things to say yes to.

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The Instagram advocation is everywhere.

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How are you going to, how are you going to say no to these?

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How are you going to say no to these good things and where are you going to say no to?

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Why are you going to do it?

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See how, what and why?

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Why are you going to say no to these things?

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Because you're pursuing your calling.

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You have a great calling on your life.

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Something that God has destined for you, something that you're living in every day.

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You can't do that well.

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You can't do that with excellence.

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If you keep saying yes to all of the right, you can't keep doing that if you're always

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saying yes to the good, only the good things and saying no.

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You especially can't do that.

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And honestly, I think this is actually more important.

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If you keep saying no to the, no to the wrong, well, if you keep saying yes to the wrong,

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to the wrong things, you keep saying no to the right things.

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Like, I think that's when people start to spiral.

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That's when people's lives start to go into the pits.

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But that's also where you learn, you know, to kind of, that's also when you get sharpened.

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That's also when you're kind of against the grindstone to learn how to say yes to, to

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endure and say yes to the right things, say no to the wrong things and stay on the right

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path to pursue your calling well.

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Does that make sense?

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I want you to tell me in the comments what you think of this episode so far.

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I'm going to go talk a little bit about one more lesson just very briefly and then we're

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going to wrap it up.

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So how to listen to your mentors.

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That's what I, that's another great lesson that I learned here because there are two

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people that I talked to during this.

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I talked to Ed Newell, Pastor Ed Newell, who had been on the podcast and I've also talked

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to Pat Williams, who was also on the podcast previously.

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And they both gave me great advice.

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They both, I called both of them on different times whenever I was spiraling out of control

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because I was losing my mind about losing $4,000.

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I was really stressing out guys.

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And they, you know why you want to say how to, why you want to listen to these mentors

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or why you want to find mentors?

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Because they know more than you.

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They know more than you.

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They've been through more than you.

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They've experienced more most of the time.

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And like Pat, every, I would send him updates about what these guys were saying to me, like

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through Instagram messaging.

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They were telling me I was going to leave my money.

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I would message Pat and he was like, no, Thomas, you're fine.

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You're good.

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You didn't sign anything.

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Like you're fine.

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Just wait.

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You're going to get your money back.

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You're not, you're, you're, you, and he just kept me, he kept me, he kept me calm.

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He kept my mind right.

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And Ed did the same for me.

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Ed, I called him once whenever I was spiraling out of control because, and I knew it.

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So I called him and I was like, I just, I just need to talk because I can't be in my

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own head right now.

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And because I was thinking about how terrible it was, I would lost $4,000.

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I was beating myself up and he helped me not do that.

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He gave me great.

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He gave me grace.

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And so I want to say just real quick to finish off this, to finish off this episode, if you

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don't have any mentors, find them, seek them out.

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Most of the time they're not going to find you, so you have to find them.

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You have to reach out to them.

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You have to serve them and ask them how you can ask them, how you can help them so that

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you know that you value them.

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They know that you value them.

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There's a whole lesson in that.

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There's a whole podcast episode in that, but there's, but I really just felt like I wanted

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to get it, say that I really wanted to say like through that whole experience, the biggest

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thing that got me through it wasn't, was my mentors that I already had established in

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my life.

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So guys, if you listen to this whole episode, which at this point I think you did give it

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a five star review, follow the pursuit of calling on Spotify, Apple podcast, wherever

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you listen to your podcasts and you know, subscribing really helps out the algorithm,

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helps it push to more people expect and also you want to do else.

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It helps giving a five star review already said it, but I'm going to say it again, give

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them five star review, do it right now so that other people can find this content and

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find them out and get value from it and learn something from it and pursue their con so

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that in order to pursue their calling well.

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All right guys, I'll see you next time.

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Peace.